It’s funny how quickly momentum can shift instantly, especially in the games industry. Your title could be the talk of the town for months, an unparalleled success that continues to see strong sales viewed as the right approach to live service in terms of monetization, gameplay and evolving storylines. The next moment, you garnered hundreds of thousands of negative recent reviews on Steam in the span of days.
Such is the fate that recently befell Arrowhead Game Studios’ Helldivers 2 – a title that received extensive praise despite its rough start. How did this happen? How did one of the surprise successes of the year – the seventh best-selling Sony-published title in its history and the best-selling premium game year-to-date – end up this way?
It all started with an innocuous post on Steam. Players on PS5 and PC were still reeling from the massive balance patch that adjusted numerous weapons and Stratagems, but the overall mood on the title remained positive. This new post came from Sony Interactive Entertainment instead of Arrowhead and notified players that linking their Steam account to a PlayStation Network account would be mandatory.
Starting May 6th, new Helldivers 2 players on Steam would have to connect the two, while existing players must do so by June 4th (though the mandatory login screen would start appearing from May 30th onwards). Sony notes that “Account linking plays a critical role in protecting our players and upholding the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games. This is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behaviour. It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal.”
Obviously, there was an uproar. How could Sony enforce these requirements after players had spent so many months on the title? However, the mandatory PSN linking isn’t a new thing – it was present at launch but made temporarily optional due to server issues to ensure players could get into the game. The decision was ultimately at the behest of Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt, but we’ll come back to that.
It’s annoying enough for people to link accounts across multiple platforms. Electronic Arts continues to receive flak for requiring Steam players to log in to EA App (previously known as Origin) to enjoy titles like Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. Sony also doesn’t have the best history when protecting data. As recently as October 2023, it informed employees of data theft, and while PlayStation users weren’t affected, there have been times in the past when tens of millions of PSN accounts had their details compromised by hackers.
As annoying as this is, another more serious issue came to light – the PlayStation Network isn’t available in numerous regions worldwide. If you live in Egypt, Madagascar, Morocco, Myanmar, Cambodia, Bhutan, Somalia, and so on, you can’t link to a PSN ID. Thus, the amount of time on your Helldivers 2 profile, never mind any potential money spent, was effectively wasted. While there are means to create PSN accounts in other supported regions, it’s far from an official solution.
Why even bother selling Helldivers 2 on Steam in those regions if the PSN requirement would create such a barrier? At this point, the obvious solution seemed to lay in backtracking and looking for other solutions to combat griefing and abuse. Naturally, it opted for the next best solution – delisting the game in all 177 countries and territories where PlayStation was available.
What about existing customers in those regions? They can reportedly apply for a refund from Valve, who is allegedly honoring the same regardless of playtime. It’s an unprecedented decision and almost impressive in its audacity. Sony went from shooting itself in one foot to promptly shooting itself in the other.
As for Arrowhead’s reaction to all this, Pilestedt responded to the initial wave of negative Steam reviews with, “Ouch, right in the review score,” before seriously adding, “Well, I guess it’s warranted. Sorry, everyone, for how this all transpired. I hope we will make it up and regain the trust by providing a continued great game experience. I just want to make great games!”
After a tweet about “Waking up to the sunshine of yesterday replaced with a dreary drizzle and shivering winds” and how “rain is essential to growth and is what changes spring into summer,” Pilestedt would follow up a few hours later with, “Is this the moment to tweet ‘What? You guys don’t have phones?’
“On a serious note: We are talking solutions with PlayStation, especially for non-PSN countries. Your voice has been heard, and I am doing everything I can to speak for the community – but I don’t have the final say.”
He admitted to not being blameless in this whole ordeal and revealed that “We were asked to make mandatory account linking six months before launch (i.e. as the game was finishing up). On launch day, it was mandatory (as detailed in the description on the Steam page), and it was disabled a couple of hours after launch due to server issues (which was my decision. Otherwise the game would have been unplayable for everyone).
“We notified the community that we were suspending it temporarily but would reinstate it in the future. But yeah, working our asses off for eight years, pouring blood, sweat, tears, and worrying about if players will like our life’s work is a good basis for a scam,” he concluded before apologizing for the rant. When asked why the game was sold in countries without PSN if they knew it was required six months before launch, Pilestedt stated, “We do not handle selling the game.”
He would then reveal more details on how the deal came about. “We signed Helldivers 2 eight years ago. It doesn’t specify details such as account linking. There are always requirements from publishers during development. This was one of them.
“We did discuss it, and it was deemed as important for PlayStation to have it for an online title, and it was implemented a couple of months before release.” After servers were overloaded at launch – to the point where matchmaking was a total crapshoot – account linking and stats for Galactic War were turned off to ease things.
“We couldn’t enable it again because of the risk of exploding the servers again (and remember the negative feedback around that). Now, finally, the requirement to re-enable came from PlayStation (to help with moderation) – and we had to comply even though there were concerns there would be backlash. There was a backlash. And now we’re talking about it again.”
It’s a sordid tale, and Pilestedt says he’s doing “what I can and voicing the opinion of the community.” Fortunately, it seems that the backlash finally did get to Sony – it announced that it’s not going forward with the account-linking plans.
“We’re still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable. Thanks again for your continued support of Helldivers 2 and we’ll keep you updated on future plans.” In response, many of the negative reviews on Steam are shifting back to positive. The recent reviews have gone from “Overwhelmingly Negative” to “Mixed”, with 50 percent positive, in short order.
Nevertheless, the whole ordeal has been unfortunate. Helldivers 2 is a great game to jump into with random players and friends and chill out for hours at a time. The storytelling has allowed for some memorable conflicts in a short span, whether it’s the inoculation of the Terminids leading to their flying variants, the all-out war against the Automatons, the arrival of Exosuits, etc. To taint so many memories of it because Sony did what Sony had to do is shameful.
Outside of how much it affected Arrowhead’s title and reputation (all this happening before the upcoming release of its next Premium Warbond doesn’t help), this approach also creates concerns for Sony’s future titles on PC. Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut requires PSN to play Legends and not for single-player, but what guarantee is there of it staying this way forever? Whether there are other solutions for combating problematic players or not, the backlash to Helldivers 2 will now serve as a warning for those picking up future PC ports from Sony.
Maybe it will think first before attempting such wholesale changes, or announce something like account-linking ahead of time. Either way, this isn’t the end by a long shot.